The butchering process of animals generally requires the skinning and removal of meat from the animal carcass after the animal has been killed. The extraction of meat from bone and cartilage and the separation of particular meat components is time consuming, expensive, labor intensive and potentially dangerous.
During processing, an animal carcass is commonly suspended from a hook and transported on a rail or tram along a fabrication line having different butchering stations. At each station, workers manually remove different portions of meat and bone for processing and eventual packaging. The removal of specific cuts of meat is generally accomplished manually with repetitive knife cuts to isolate and remove the desired cuts of meat. The process is time consuming and can result in ergonomic stress injuries to workers as a result of the repetitive motion involved during the cutting and separation procedures.
Air injection processes currently known in the art suffer from several significant limitations. First, there exists a danger of meat contamination due to bacterial growth associated with the injection of aerobic, non-filtered gas. Second, contamination may occur if a non-sterilized probe is inserted into the animal carcass. Third, no apparatus is available that controls the pressure, volume, and/or the exact site of injection of compressed air into an animal carcass. Injection of an insufficient volume of air is inefficient, wasteful and the benefits realized are minimal. Moreover, if an excessive volume of air is injected, the processed meat component can retain excessive volumes of residual air which may not be entirely evacuated during subsequent vacuum packaging processes. As excess air that has been forced into the meat is released from the meat product, the meat package may become inflated, giving the packaged meat product a bloated appearance that can easily be mistaken for a spoiled meat product (e.g., it looks as if spoilage bacteria have produced waste gases). Furthermore, the packaged meat product may become contaminated from excessive oxygen content, providing an environment for the undesired proliferation of spoilage and pathogenic bacteria.
Thus, a significant problem exists in meat fabrication plants to provide a sterilized, controlled pressure and volume gas injection system which reduces the forces necessary to remove meat from an animal carcass, thus reducing repetitive stress related injuries and, at the same time, eliminating waste resulting from meat contamination.